I have been promising to get a quick little post up about the knitting project I took with me on my recent trip to England and as there are so many new yarns, books, patterns, etc to tell you about there’s no time like the present.

As we were staying with our best friends you could guarantee there would be a good deal of talking into the wee small hours and there was.  So I needed something that wasn’t going to be full of lace or require much pattern watching and everything I was knitting (some of which I still am) didn’t fit the bill.

Dina my daughter is always adding things to her Ravelry queue, she loves plain and is always in need of more jumpers.  Having gone through her list of Ravelry favourites and discarded the bulk of them because they’re mostly 4ply (not happening) we agreed I’d make the Il Grande Favorito by Isablell Kraemer.

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/il-grande-favorito

Having knitted Dina a good few jumpers in the past, some of which haven’t ever seen the light of day I was reluctant to use the lovely merino she originally selected.  We compromised and as the jumper is a chunky knit I used a strand of King Cole Haze (now discontinued) and one of King Cole Moods held together.

Like all good knitters (?) I knitted my tension square (actually I really did) and cast on on the ferry crossing to England.  The jumper was completed by the time I got back back to Ireland as I took it with me everywhere in the car with us to try and squeeze some rows in.

I even managed to get a bit of knitting in at the Pickering Steam Fair and the jumper would have been finished sooner had I not realised I’d picked up one less stitch under the arms than necessary – when I came to knit the cuff! One whole sleeve ripped out and re-knitted.

Even so it was a great, easy, top down project and Dina loves it, even if it doesn’t look like she does here.

I’ll happily make her another in Merino now and have even added it to my ‘to do’ list as it’s a very flattering knit.  I think I might put a little waist shaping in for good measure too.  If you have a look at the projects tab on the pattern page you can see other knitters have used a combination of stocking stitch and reversed stocking stitch.  The pattern does cost €4.50 to download but I think it’s worth every cent.

Happy knitting!